Why Europe Keeps Failing........ merged with "EU Seizes Cypriot Bank Accounts"

[Kirkhill]

The Yellow Jackets' protest isn't so much about over-regulation as it is about an increase in gasoline tax (since rolled back) high cost of living, minimum wages and various tax issues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_movement

(That's not to say, however, that the French aren't regulated up to their eyeballs. Pretty much every western government is these days--including us)

:subbies:

Further to this -

...the “failure to prevent” statute should extend to all areas of economic crime, where a company would be held to account if it could not prove it had done enough to prevent crime committed on its watch.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/12/09/time-get-grip-serious-farce-office/

How one earth does one prove that one has ever done enough of anything?  In the face of Brexit and claims for the harm that it has, is, will or may do I believe that implementation of such a policy through law and regulation would cause much greater harm to the economy.

The article is about a British government agency, the Serious Fraud Office.  It is occasioned by concern that they have lost a few cases after investing 10s of millions of pounds in investigations.  The people in charge of the office, including a recently appointed lawyer who apparently cut her teeth working for the FBI, are convinced that the solution is ever more stringent, ever expanding, ever more encompassing laws that will allow them to boost their conviction rates.

What is the point of a court room if the government is guaranteed to win >90% of its cases?  Shouldn't the bar be set at 50% if the system is fair and equitable?

And if you keep piling on the requirement to document you will create the environment in which Canada now builds pipelines.

Rant continues....  ;D

The words that I have come to detest over the last 30 years or so are:

Reasonable. Acceptable. Best available. Best practice.

These words have become the go to vocabulary for bureaucrats creating legislation.  They replace the prescriptive codes that I grew up with which said that if you drove under 60 mph you were not breaking the law.  If you pasteurized milk to 161F for 16 secs you were not breaking the law.

Now, in my trade, I am required to prove that it is reasonable, acceptable to drive under 60.  To prove that best practice, with the best available technology requires that milk be pasteurized at 161F for 16 secs and that the marker enzyme inactivated, phosphatase, is an adequate marker for the process and for all historic and foreseeable bacteria.

How can I ever prove that I have done enough? 

The short answer is I can't.  And some lawyer will be happy to inform me of that fact for a fee.

Cheers. 

Edit - and for Gawd's sake don't get me started on Consultants.

 

[Kirkhill]

OK! It is Sunday and I haven't ranted for a while.  I will indulge myself.

England has a population of 55,000,000
Scotland has a population of  5,500,000
Wales has a population of 3,500,000
Northern Ireland has a population of 1,900,000

The number of solicitors qualified to work in England and Wales has rocketed over the past 30 years, according to new figures from the Law Society. The number holding certificates - which excludes retired lawyers and those no longer following a legal career - are at nearly 118,000, up 36% on ten years ago.Apr 4, 2011

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/apr/04/solicitors-number-england-wales-ethnicity

Lawyers represented 0.2% of the population 7 years ago and that was up 36% since 2001.  The population hasn't grown in the UK but the number of lawyers has.

Meanwhile they represent almost 20% of the population in the UK House of Commons.

A degree of over representation, one feels.

At the 2015 general election, according to an analysis by BPP University, a private law school, 119 of 650 MPs elected had either studied or practised law. That was up from 85 in 2010.Nov 8, 2016

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/11/unfair-attacks-liz-truss-shows-parliament-many-lawyers/


And then there is this

The U.K. legal sector could suffer a £3 billion ($3.87 billion) revenue hit and lose 12,000 jobs by 2025 in the event of a “no-deal” Brexit, according to a new study released by the Law Society, an independent professional association that represents and governs solicitors in England and Wales.

The study warns against the potentially “significant negative effects” on the legal sector of a hard Brexit, an outcome which is expected to hit revenue growth and economic performance across all sectors, resulting in reduced demand for legal services and a decrease in employment in the legal sector.
In its analysis of both “soft” and “hard” Brexit outcomes, the Law Society anticipates a loss of nearly $3.9 billion in revenue to the legal sector by 2025 in the event of a no-deal. The study suggested that if in such a situation the U.K. were to fall back on World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, growth in the sector could drop to as low as 1.1 percent per year—or £30.86 billion ($39.84 billion) revenue by 2025—as opposed to steady growth of 2.1 percent in a “soft” Brexit scenario—or £33.83 billion ($43.67 billion) turnover. 

Both figures contrast starkly with the 4.6 percent average annual growth the legal sector saw before the 2008 financial crisis.

https://www.law.com/international/2018/08/22/no-deal-brexit-could-see-uk-legal-sector-shed-12000-jobs-and-lose-3bn-in-turnover-396-6130/?slreturn=20181109144849

I'm sure that it is purely coincidental that some of the most ardent opponents of Brexit, and especially a clean, no-deal, WTO Brexit, are lawyers - led by a former Attorney General.

And yes, he always looks as if he is about to burst into tears.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

My wife will be counted as one of those Lawyers, due to the University of London doing "outreach" programs and her degree is from there, but she practiced in Malaysia and Canada only.

 

[Kirkhill]

A contributing factor to Brexit

It might be helpful to remember not just Max Weber, but also Abbé Sieyès, the great theoretician of the French Revolution. In 1799, he wrote: "Authority comes from above, trust from below." This formula still applies today -- to France, but also to Europe.

Henrik Enderlein is the president and professor of political economy at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin as well as the director of the Jacques Delors Institute.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/commentary-macron-versus-the-yellow-vests-a-1243724.html


Somewhat at odds with the tradition of "consent of the governed - of, for and by the people" and Anglo-Saxon Bills of Rights, but very much in keeping with "Pacem in Terris" (1963).

And just a reminder, Der Spiegel sees itself as a "socialist" organ.

Meanwhile, in Britain, there are like-minded people, even in the Conservative party, like Matthew Parris writing for the Spectator

"Why I don't, never have, and never will, trust the people."

...he said: ‘I just worry about our democracy, respect for our constitution and the effect that a betrayal of the 2016 referendum result would have on the people who voted for me and our party last year.’ ... As a democrat, and a Conservative who owed his position in Parliament to a little piece of England that he came from, that he knew, that knew him, and whose electors’ minds and feelings he had come to understand over the years, my friend felt with a quiet passion that he must not break his word to them, must not slither away from undertakings that had been given.

He felt the same about the electorate nationally, the British people’s trust in the Conservative party, and their confidence in politics itself. He felt, in short, conscious of an unseen bond between parliament and people, and fearful of the wider consequences should it be broken.....

Tories like me, and I think we used to be in the majority, see good governance as an effort to live with democracy rather than to an effort to live by democracy. It is why we were so chary about referendums in the first place. We are wary of the populace and instinctively hostile to the instincts of the mob. We see the popular will as a sometimes dangerous thing, to be handled, guided, and on key occasions (and subtly) thwarted.

...[in 1977, it was commonplace among us Tories to see and describe ‘the will of the people’ not as our mentor but as a rock to be navigated. Capital punishment and judicial flogging were very popular with the public. The hanging debate at party conferences was an annual nightmare for our leading spokesmen, but I never heard it suggested, even by colleagues who supported the return of these punishments, that we should bring them back because the people wanted it.

As for colleagues opposed to both, our challenge was to find ways of ducking the issue. Once I became an MP, I did so by voting for the principle and against the practice. This subversion of democracy (in Theresa May’s phrase) caused me embarrassment, but not a second’s guilt. Sod democracy: hanging was wrong...

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/12/why-i-dont-never-have-and-never-will-trust-the-people/

I suggest there are a lot of Matthew Parris's in this world, of all parties and nationalities and ideologies whose "Sod democracy" attitude and belief in Abbe Sieyes authoritarian views have resulted in the anti-intellectual (scratch intellectual - I can't stand the pretension) anti-elite environment in which they find themselves.

 

[Kirkhill]

How many ways can you slice and dice Europe?  - Bulgarian Tongue occasionally in cheek.

Demotivateur
20 manières géniales (et hilarantes) de cartographier l'Europe, en utilisant les plus gros stéréotypes
Par Nathan Weber|il y a 1 an 7 221 partages

Amis des préjugés et des stéréotypes en tous genres, bonjour ! On a trouvé la carte d'Europe qu'il vous faut : c'est Yanko Tsvetkov, un graphiste bulgare qui habite aujourd'hui en Espagne, qui en est à l'origine. Il faut dire que l'homme n'en est pas à son coup d'essai : il est déjà l'auteur d'un véritable atlas des préjugés, dans lequel il compile différentes cartes du monde en adoptant avec humour différent points de vue  .

Joyeusement caricaturales, ces cartes sont bien entendu à prendre avec second degré... Il faut dire que cela résume bien les différents préjugés que l'on peut avoir sur nos chers voisins Européens ! C'est globalement assez juste, même si on pourra noter quelques erreurs ou approximations manifestes (Sérieux, comment ça se fait que l'Italie et la moitié de la Pologne fassent partie de la zone qui ne sait pas déboucher un évier tout seul ? Ils ne sont pas tous plombiers, là-bas ?)

https://m.demotivateur.fr/article/20-manieres-geniales-et-hilarantes-de-cartographier-l-europe-en-utilisant-les-plus-gros-stereotypes-11193